Impetus for innovation in failure analysis and material diagnostics of electronic components

The two-day CAM workshop, which took place for the eleventh time in Halle (Saale), brought together experts from the electronics industry and manufacturers of material diagnostic devices. Together, they discussed challenges, innovative solutions and future requirements in microelectronics and power electronics. The professional exchange focused on how to provide the necessary analysis techniques to ensure quality and reliability for the new technology trends in the field of heterointegration with very complex circuits and component designs or silicon carbide (SIC)-based power electronics and. Accordingly, new innovative methodological approaches and analysis tools for failure diagnostics were presented and discussed.

The highlight was the four keynote speeches. Frank Fournel from CEA-Leti (France) explained why hybrid wafer bonding is a key enabling technology for the future establishment of 3D packaging and heterointegration. His keynote provided valuable insights into the technological challenges and scientific concepts of defect metrology and bond strength evaluation. Anton Chichkov from the Chips Joint Undertaking (Belgium) then gave an overview of the funding opportunities and framework conditions of the EU Chips Act. As part of this major funding program, it is planned to set up pilot lines for the development of state-of-the-art IC technologies at CEA-Leti and IMEC (Belgium) and a pilot line for silicon heterointegration at the Research Fab Microelectronics Germany (FMD). The Fraunhofer IMWS is part of the FMD consortium and would like to support the development of the pilot lines with its expertise in failure diagnostics.

The second day started with a tutorial by Michael Kögel from Fraunhofer IMWS on the topic of AI methods in failure diagnostics. The subsequent keynote speech by Peter Friedrichs (Infineon Technologies) focused on the robustness and reliability of SiC components, whose use in power electronics has increased significantly in recent years and plays an important role in energy savings in the field of e-mobility, green energy, 5G and large data centers. In the final session on digitalization and AI-based failure diagnostics, keynote speaker Prof. Dr. Zhiheng Huang from Sun Yat-sen University (China) presented new approaches for generating digital twins of different microelectronic materials using mathematical and AI-based methods.

In total, more than 150 guests from twelve nations attended the 25 presentations at the workshop on the key topics addressed in the keynotes. The event also featured an extensive exhibition of equipment manufacturers from the field of material diagnostics and a panel discussion on the failure analysis technology roadmap, which has been drawn up by the international Electronic Device Failure Analysis Society (EDFAS) and is currently being discussed with analysis equipment manufacturers.

"I am delighted that the CAM workshop was once again such a great success. We were able to create a unique format for direct interaction between failure analysis experts and manufacturers of analysis technology and were also able to contribute our own research results from recent projects to many of the topics. The CAM Workshop has thus established itself as an internationally recognized event and a hub for failure diagnosis in electronics," says Frank Altmann, Head of the "Materials and Components in Electronics" business unit and organizer of the workshop.